Opera superstar Angela Gheorghiu will be in the Royal Opera House Shop to sign copies of her recordings after the matinee performance of La rondine on Sunday 21 July at approximately 4pm.

Gheorghiu, who is singing the role of worldly-wise courtesan Magda, recently performed to 1000s across the UK when La rondine was relayed live as part of BP Big Screens. Read audience reactions to the screening.

She has a substantial discography, and a wide range of her CDs and DVDs will be available to buy in store beforehand, including La rondine, on both DVD and CD, and her latest release ‘Angela Gheorghiu sings Verdi’.

Watch Gheorghiu discussing the challenges of La rondine and what she likes about the opera:

Puccini’s opera La rondine is full of waltzes. There are delicate toe-tapping ones with a solo voice, and full-blown whirling ones with dramatic pauses in the Viennese fashion and the entire company singing and dancing. What is it about a waltz that is so captivating?

The elegant, respectable and restrained gliding we associate with ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ is not how it was first viewed. The waltz grew popular in Vienna in the late 1700s and began to appear in continental dance halls. But it was a suggestive and dangerous dance in comparison to the propriety of the main shared dances in formal groups. Think of those Jane Austen period dramas with everyone in long lines – men on one side, women on the other, changing partners and everyone watching and listening to everyone else. But with the waltz the couple dancing were together, alone, and their bodies were even pressed against each other. There was suggestive physical contact and the couple could have private conversations.

Clearly, the waltz was not thought respectable and decent. On the occasion of her 18th birthday party, Princess Victoria – later Queen – wrote in her diary that ‘Count Waldstein looks remarkably well in his pretty uniform’. She wanted to dance with him, but ‘He could not dance the quadrille and, as in my station I unfortunately cannot waltz and gallop, I could not dance with him!’ This romantic and even erotic air has contributed to the mystique of the waltz. Through the 19th century it became the soundtrack for love.

The waltz also finds its way into musical comedy, where Rodgers with Hart and then with Hammerstein gave it a particular American, 20th-century twist (‘Falling in Love with Love’ and ‘Wonderful Guy’ are just two of many examples). The use of the waltz to signify romance allowed Sondheim to write the lyrics of the show title song ‘Do I Hear a Waltz?’. In other words, if you hear a waltz, then you know it must be love.

When Johann Strauss II – the ‘Waltz King’ – began writing operettas, he naturally put waltzes in them as the perfect means of combining lilting music with romance and drama. In fact, the waltz is now intrinsically associated with operetta. In Lehár’s Die lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow) the tensions and final resolution of the love affair between Hanna Glawari and Count Danilo are developed through a shared melody, the famous ‘Merry Widow Waltz’. Puccini wrote La rondine as an opera – he as very clear from the start that it was not an operetta. But something about that original commission he had from Vienna put the possibility of using the waltz into his mind. From the music Puccini wrote, it’s clear that this was an opportunity he wanted to indulge.

The appeal of the waltz has much to do with its three beats in a bar. We have two feet, so anything in threes immediately makes us move differently with more continuity, which thus leads to turning. The energy of this whirling propels dance into what feels like perpetual motion. And the music responds to this too. To listen to the main waltz section in Act II of La rondine is to experience this uplifting feeling, and be drawn into it, as are the dancers in the drama.

La rondine runs from 5 – 21 July. Tickets are on sale now.
The production is sponsored by Coutts. Generous philanthropic support was given by Mr and Mrs Christopher W.T. Johnston and The American Friends of Covent Garden.

Throughout the history of opera, letters have played a vital part in the plots of many works. Here are a few examples of operas where letters loom large:

Le nozze di Figaro by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Letters play a very complicated part in this Mozart masterpiece. In Act II, Figaro decides to distract Count Almaviva from seducing Figaro’s fiancée Susanna by sending him an anonymous letter telling him that his wife is unfaithful. The plot backfires when the Count decides to confront the Countess – just after she has hidden the page Cherubino in her cupboard. It takes a great deal of cunning on Susanna’s part to convince the Count his suspicions are unfounded. A second letter plays an important role in Susanna and the Countess’s plot to shame the Count (letter duet: ‘Sull'aria'). When the Count receives the letter they have concocted, he believes Susanna is genuinely planning a tryst with him. Unfortunately, Figaro gets to hear about the letter, and he believes it too. He becomes wildly jealous, and much further confusion follows before Figaro and Susanna, and the Count and Countess, are reconciled.

Letters whiz about the stage from the start of Verdi’s sparkling comedy. The large and lecherous Sir John Falstaff, in need of funds, sends two (identical) letters to the wealthy Windsor wives Alice Ford and Meg Page. Alice and Meg realize what Sir John is up to and determine to teach him a lesson. Letters – delivered to Falstaff by their friend Mistress Quickly – play a key role in their schemes, particularly Falstaff’s final humiliation in Windsor Forest.

Eugene Onegin contains perhaps the most famous letter in all opera. When the literature-loving Tatyana falls in love with the sophisticated Eugene Onegin, she writes him a long and passionate letter explaining her feelings (Letter Aria: ‘Puskai pogybnu ja’ (I cannot hide my love)). Onegin coolly rejects her and tells her to be more guarded in showing her emotions. However, in Act III the tables are turned when Onegin falls passionately in love with Tatyana, who is now married. To music from her Act I Letter Aria, he declares his intention to write to Tatyana and tell her his feelings.

Letters provide a wake-up call in the final act of La rondine. The courtesan Magda has spent several months pretending to her young lover Ruggero that she is a simple working girl. When Ruggero tells her that he has written to his mother asking permission for them to marry, she realizes that she will not be able to keep deceiving him. A note from her former protector Rambaldo, stating that he will take her back on any terms, shows her that her former life is still an option. A third letter finally makes up Magda’s mind for her – Ruggero’s mother writes to him of her pleasure that her son has found a good and virtuous fiancée. Unable to keep lying, Magda confesses her past to Ruggero, and leaves him to return to her old life in Paris.

And finally, the ‘letter plot’ takes on a supernatural tinge in Britten’s take on Henry James’s ghost story. A young Governess arrives at the remote Bly House to take care of two young children, Miles and Flora. Soon after her arrival, she receives a letter telling her that Miles is expelled from school for causing ‘an injury to his friends’. This makes her uneasy. And things get a lot worse when she encounters the ghosts of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel, the former valet and governess at Bly House. Increasingly frightened of the ghosts, and the effect they are having on Miles and Flora, she writes to the children’s guardian to ask for help. Peter Quint threatens and cajoles Miles into stealing the letter. The Governess eventually confronts Miles, and her frantic questions about the letter may be one of the factors that contribute to the boy’s death.